place
Acheron
A river of pain and a ferry-shore in Greek underworld speech. Not Styx, and not Cocytus as the wailing twin.
Hellenic religion
Acheron appears in Hellenic religion.
Pausanias names the Thesprotian Acheron and its necromantic sanctuary among underworld-approach speech in Greece. A named Acheron in that periegesis, not Homeric underworld river poetry alone and not Styx already walked.
from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE
appears in · sourced · documented
Roman religion
Acheron appears in Roman religion.
Virgil’s Aeneid Book 6 seats Acheron among the underworld rivers Charon’s ferry crosses with Aeneas and the Sibyl. A named underworld river in that Roman katabasis, not the Styx walk already filed and not a generic river dump.
from Virgil · Aeneid, 19 BCE (unfinished at the poet’s death)
appears in · sourced · documented
sources
- Description of Greece · Pausanias
Pausanias, Description of Greece.
- Aeneid · Virgil
Virgil, Aeneid.